Monday, February 10, 2014

This is my new favorite tech parody. OR IS IT!!!???!

I consider myself #blessed to have correspondents like Sarah Fidelibus who send me links to amazing shit like this piece in "re/code" (which I had never heard of but is connected to CNBC in some way?) called "The 2,500 Person Tech Mixer That Was Not a Party."  Do you know about Poe's Law?  It basically says that, at some point, extreme viewpoints are indistinguishable from a parody of same.  There needs to be a tech corollary because it's getting impossible to distinguish actual tech and gentrification stories from parodies of them.  This article is a prime example.  Let's grab a quote from "Andrew Vecchio, the co-founder and CEO of Startup and Tech Mixer," to illustrate:

“This is our fifth mixer. People are like, ‘Andrew, what could be next?’ And it’s like, ‘Oh. Done.’ We have a mechanical bull. Game-changer. Innovate.” 
Hahahaha. That's great!  It's a perfect parody of the BS-speak endemic to tech culture.  EXCEPT IT'S APPARENTLY REAL.  That guy actually said that, unless the reporter made it up, which I hope is true.

MECHANICAL BULL.  GAME-CHANGER.  DISRUPT THE PARTY SCENE.

This maybe-true-or-not not-party happened at the W Hotel, which is just perfect.  I happened to be at the W Hotel a couple of weeks ago to meet a friend who was in town and the W Hotel is like somebody decided 1998 or 1999 was the Best Year and froze everything there. You know how every bar now is Edison bulbs and reclaimed wood?  NOT THE W!  The bar there is all hard white surfaces and blinking LEDs and trance music.  It looks EXACTLY like the last dot-com crash.  Since this party sounds like it was airlifted out of 1999, it was a perfect venue choice.

Anyway, the article goes on and on and gets more unbelievable as it goes but don't take my word for it, read it yourself.  Disrupt.

UPDATE: Sam Biddle also writes about this event for Valleywag, and makes a lot of the same points I did, but with pictures and more research.

7 comments:

GG said...

I just had a Twitter conversation about this, in which I was genuinely confused (maybe I kind of still am?) about whether or not this is a joke. I feel like it has to be, but I can't find anything beyond the content itself to indicate that. BTW, in googling for a link to reference that notorious 1998-ish TheGlobe.com party, I learned that TheGlobe.com is still technically a publicly-traded (OTC) company. Maybe its time for a comeback is nigh!

Civic Center said...

Wow. If it is a parody, it is extraordinarily skillful. If not, god help us all.

Besides the description of The Serenity Space where Kind healthful snack bars were being handed out, my favorite quote was the following:

Mike Vladimir, 34, said that since everyone was a potential target for networking, the event felt like a gay dating event. “A straight dating event, you only want half the people. But everyone’s here for the same purpose. You could want anyone.”

Stephen said...

As I noted on valleywag, "We have a mechanical bull. Game-changer. Innovate," Sounds EXACTLY like the Tom Haverford character in Parks & Recreation.

TK said...

GG - Pretty sure it's not a joke, as the event has its own website and FB page.

MS - One of the many great quotes.

S - You're cheating on me with Valleywag? RUDE.

GG said...

God help us, then.

Unknown said...

"This was their biggest work-centric rave yet, by far."

Just let that sink in: Work. Centric. Rave.

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